Harry Pieper

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Karl Erdmann Harry Pieper (born March 9, 1907 in Berlin ; † September 19, 1978 ibid) was a modern western interpreter of Buddhism , whose direction Jōdo-Shinshū he introduced in Europe.

Harry Pieper was director of the Buddhist House in Berlin-Frohnau from 1930 to 1934 , the first Buddhist temple in Germany to follow the Theravada direction. Although he was banned from Buddhist activities by the Nazi authorities in 1934, he led an underground Buddhist group until he was drafted into the Wehrmacht. When Pieper returned from Soviet captivity in 1946, he founded and directed the “Buddhist Mission Berlin”. Since 1951 he was a student of the Lama Anagarika Govinda . Pieper was with Lionel Stützer and Hans-Ulrich Rieker in 1952 a founding member of the western branch of the Arya Maitreya Mandala, which Govinda launched in 1933 . On November 16, 1954 Pieper became a student of the 23rd Patriarch of the Jōdo-Shinshū , Kōshō Ōtani , on whose behalf he represented the Hongan Temple ( Kyōto ) in Europe. Numerous Buddhist centers and institutions in Europe can be traced back to Harry Pieper's work, for example the Shingyo-ji Buddhist temple in Geneva and the Salzburg Buddhist community founded by Friedrich Fenzl .

Pieper developed a large publication activity. In the 1950s, for example, he published the magazine “Licht des Dharma” (1951–1954), from which the magazine Der Kreis , founded by Hans-Ulrich Rieker and Wilhelm A. Rink, developed. From the mid-1960s, Pieper headed the magazine “Mahayana” (1965–1975). He translated numerous Buddhist writings from English into German, including "The True Meaning of Buddhism" by Ryuchi Fujii (Originally: "The True Meaning of Buddhism"), which were printed in Kyoto and distributed among Pieper's circle of students and friends. Pieper's works are difficult to access in German, but were published in Japanese translation in Kyoto in 1989 by the International Association of Buddhist Culture.

Harry Pieper's approach was to bring the European engagement with Buddhism down from an intellectual level to one of experience. He was influential on interpreters of Buddhism such as the Swiss Catholic Canon Jean Eracle . Its main influence is noticeable today in Buddhist circles in Japan.

literature

  • Jean Eracle: De la croix au lotus. Geneva 1996.
  • Hellmuth Hecker : "Harry Pieper" in: Life Pictures of German Buddhists. Volume II. Konstanz 1997, pp. 257-258.
  • Volker Zotz : Shin Buddhism and the Search for New Ethics in the West. In: The Pure Land. New Series. 6.1989, pp. 117-126.
  • Volker Zotz: The search for a social Buddhism. Friedrich Fenzl and Jodo Shinshu. Luxembourg: Kairos Edition 2007, ISBN 2-9599829-6-7 (Contains a detailed chapter on Harry Pieper's life and work)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Birgit Zotz : "Eighty Years Ārya Maitreya Maṇḍala - A Chronology." In: Der Kreis No. 270, October 2013 ( ISSN  2197-6007 ), pp. 6–21.
personal data
SURNAME Pieper, Harry
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pieper, Karl Erdmann Harry (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German interpreter of Buddhism
DATE OF BIRTH March 9, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH September 19, 1978
Place of death Berlin